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Israel to recall Polish ambassador in Holocaust law spat

WARSAW — Israel will recall its ambassador in Warsaw after the Polish parliament passed a law that would make it a crime to ascribe responsibility to Poles for crimes committed by Nazis, news portal Onet reported Thursday.

“Jerusalem wants to express its dissatisfaction in this way,” an official close to the Israeli embassy and Poland’s foreign ministry, who asked not to be named, told Onet. “This means a potentially great crisis in relations between the two countries, because as long as the tension does not drop, the ambassador will not return.”

The ambassador, Anna Azari, will not lose her job, the official said.

Poland’s Senate, the upper house of parliament, approved the controversial law in the early hours of Thursday, after the lower house — the Sejm — backed it last week, prompting an angry reaction in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling it an attempt to change history.

The draft, which has yet to be signed into law by president Andrzej Duda, allows for a jail term of up to three years for “imputing publicly and against facts that the Polish nation or the Polish state are responsible or co-responsible for Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich.”

Duda has indicated his support for the law, telling the state-run TVP channel on Monday that “we have a right as a state and as a nation to defend ourselves against slander.”

Hours before the Senate approved the draft law, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said the law “could undermine free speech and academic discourse.”

“We are also concerned about the repercussions this draft legislation, if enacted, could have on Poland’s strategic interests and relationships — including with the United States and Israel,” the spokesperson warned.

The Israeli parliament decided on Wednesday to debate an amendment to its own “Holocaust denial” law that would penalize the minimizing of the role of Nazi collaborators — a clear reference to the new Polish legislation.

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Veritas-Semper

…“imputing publicly and against facts that the Polish nation or the Polish state are responsible or co-responsible for Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich.”…

Citing above proposed law: where does it say “Poles”? It does not. The proposed law refers to “Polish nation” and “Polish state”. Anyone with a clear mind can tell the difference. There is clearly no reference to individuals. And, Broniatowski deliberatly omits the most important part: the proposed law specifically excludes historical works or works of art, key parts that Israel (there were consultations for 1 1/2 years on this) insisted and received.

Again, where is the beef?

Posted on 2/1/18 | 3:15 PM CET

dc

Why Polish government has not removed that woman from the country as persona non grata first for offending Poles and as a consequence of high ranking Israeli officials blatant lies ?!?

Posted on 2/1/18 | 3:38 PM CET

maciekimaciek

Great news!
Izrael will penelize the minimazing of the role of nazzi collaborators.
Let us only hope the law concerns all collaborators, Jews from Judensrats, Judischer Ordnungsdiensts, Sonderkommando Auschwitz, Kapos, Jews from Wehrmacht, SS and German secret police, Jews who lured other Jews to Jeu de Paume in Paris and cattle wagons heading for Auschwitz from Denmark, Belgium, Norway or Greece all included. Without any exception for any country or nationality.
For until now Izraeli law from 1950 let all those Jews – nazzi collaborators escape legal responsibility.

Posted on 2/1/18 | 3:58 PM CET

Veritas-Semper

@ dc

Agreed. However, in this regard Israel is clearly wrong as they were consulted about this proposed law for over a year which resulted in inserting the key parts which are deliberately excluded from prosecution: scientific/historical works and works of art.

So, once they (those that did not actually read the proposed law) realize that they made a lot of hutzpah over something to which they agreed, they will have a way out of their own blind alley by sending the ambassador back. At which time, Poland my request someone else in place of Azari.

Posted on 2/1/18 | 4:18 PM CET

Veritas-Semper

@ maciekimaciek

Yes, Isreal will now be obligated to chase all these collaborators. Great News!

Posted on 2/1/18 | 4:49 PM CET

dc

@maciekimaciek
Yes – great news !!!

But why just na zi collaborators ?!?
Communists murdered even more people than na zis.

So I hope Is rael will finally prosecute also communist criminals of Je wish origin instead of protecting them like criminal Salomon Morel for example.
Just in Poland they are responsible for torture and murdering of thousands of Poles opposing totalitarian n azi and soviet invasions – just read Wikipedia entries for example for: Anatol Fejgin, Julia Brystygierowa, Jozef Rozanski, Jozef Swiatlo, Helena Wolinska, Salomon Morel– and about their barbarian crimes.

Posted on 2/1/18 | 5:05 PM CET

XKM

So, so far we have the USA worried, Israel worried, the EU worried Polands immediate neighbours worried, however the polish government and hotheads tell us that the rest of the world is wrong, and it’s always someone elses fault, and that they are the victims?? Hmmm what’s wrong with this picture?

Posted on 2/1/18 | 5:20 PM CET

Istvan

@maciekimaciek
Great news!
Izrael will penelize the minimazing of the role of nazzi collaborators.
Let us only hope the law concerns all collaborators, Jews from Judensrats, Judischer Ordnungsdiensts, Sonderkommando Auschwitz, Kapos, Jews from Wehrmacht, SS and German secret police, Jews who lured other Jews to Jeu de Paume in Paris and cattle wagons heading for Auschwitz from Denmark, Belgium, Norway or Greece all included. Without any exception for any country or nationality.
For until now Izraeli law from 1950 let all those Jews – nazzi collaborators escape legal responsibility.

Posted on 2/1/18 | 3:58 PM CET

I hope one G. S0r0s is on that list. He sold out a lot of his Hungarian Jewish brethren to the N@z1s for property and other assets.

Posted on 2/1/18 | 5:27 PM CET

Alert

I could swear that in polish version of proposed bill there is a word German in front of the Third Reich!!! Am I right?!
It looks like noun/adjective German is not very popular these days when it comes to the discussion about responsibility for Holocaust and is deliberately omitted from majority of publications related to it. An article above is a very good example of-so called-“liberal jurnalism deep amnesia” of historical facts.

Posted on 2/1/18 | 5:46 PM CET

dc

@XKM
So let’s have a look how Israel treated Je wish collaborators of na zis responsible for torture and murdering of other Je ws if Is rael wants to constantly lecture other countries on that.

Based on Na zi and Na zi Collaborators (Punishment) Law from 1950 according to
Israeli scholars, about thirty to forty prosecutions of kapos took place between
1951 and 1964.

“As for the verdicts, Ben-Naftali summarizes: “The available, though incomplete, sources suggest that fifteen of a total of about forty cases ended in convictions. The sentences tended to be light, and only rarely was a person sentenced to prison for a period exceeding the time he had already been in detention awaiting verdict.” Zertal points out
that “not one of the defendants tried under the law was charged with or found guilty of directly or indirectly causing the death of a single person.”
In stark contrast to the eventual results, the prosecutor’s initial charges tended to be harsh, with a number of the known cases showing individuals being charged with war crimes or crimes against humanity.”*

Well, well. So a Je w responsible for torturing and murdering other Je ws in collaboration with na zis didn’t risk a lot in Is rael.
Interesting why Is rael valued lives of compatriotes murdered under na zi regime with the help of Je wish collaborators so low by making responsabilty so small ?!?

*Source “The Strange and Curious History of the Law Used to Prosecute Adolf Eichmann”, Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review
Michael J. Bazyler, Chapman University School of Law
Julia Y. Scheppach, UOP McGeorge School of Law, 2009

Posted on 2/1/18 | 5:50 PM CET

Alert

@XKM
It only shows how influential (in bad way) Je wish organizations of all types (financial, political etc.) are and how they’re orchestrating public mood and prominent politicians in the Western Europe and in the USA to support their agenda.
Perhaps the West feels guilty of not helping Je ws during the WW II .Despite having reports (Pilecki report) about German’s atrocities towards Je wish people the Allies didn’t lift a finger to help them.
Maybe the answer to the involvement of some countries into the present situation involving Poland and Israel is their guilt of conscience? Maybe they want to make it up to Je ws for negligence of the past?

Posted on 2/1/18 | 6:43 PM CET

Anne

The Polish government is apparently passing this law because it cares about how people in the rest of the world view the country.

However, this is a PR disaster for the country, as news agencies across the world are describing a conflict between Israel and Poland about the Holocaust. Poland cannot win this argument.

If the purpose of the law is to stop foreign media from using the term “Polish concentration camps” then it is pointless, as Polish jurisdiction doesn’t extend beyond its borders. All it has accomplished is a negative backlash from the world’s media which shapes people’s view of the country.

Posted on 2/1/18 | 7:36 PM CET

Veritas-Semper

Interesting trend here. Politico has rather quickly moved this article and another on this topic quickly off its pages as old news…

Hmmm, the comments must not be going the Israel way, otherwise they would have let this “feud” fester on their pages…

Bottom line, Israel reneged on its working relationship with Poland’s lawmakers and their endorsement of the wording of the proposed law for reasons unknown. Too bad. Because Poland is their biggest ally in the EU and they have decided to jettison that relationship.

Posted on 2/1/18 | 7:50 PM CET

XKM

@dc,
No mate, the article is very specific it’s about polish law that restricts freedom of speech!!! The nonsense of look how bad are the others only fools short sighted followers of the polish government, whose ancestors most likely in WWII were telling the to the authorities where the Jews were hiding!

I am with the Poles on this one, Germany invaded Poland, Germany created the extermination camps. Why should the Poles be blamed? Pogroms went on before and after the 2nd war. so why should Israel get involved? It has nothing to do with them, it is Polish honor that is at stake here!

Posted on 2/2/18 | 2:25 AM CET

Rafael

It’s the same story as always… blame-game and fingerpointing but at the same time failing to see some other facts.

For all readers of Je wish descent here.
Please let me just remind you of one thing. Poles have suffered much more under German/Soviet invasion and occupation then the Je ws ever did. Of course, many million Je wish lives were killed but the same happened also to Poles. The Holoc@ust was not just a Je wish tragedy as often portrayed in the press and the media. Also 3. mio Poles (and also other nationalities) died during that time period in various GERMAN death and work camps, next to some other millions who died in battles, in prisons etc . Poland as a country ceased to exist and all major cities and infrastructure were destroyed. It was complete annihilation for the Poles.
The distinction between Je ws and Poles is also a bit schizophrenic. Not only were many Je ws basically Poles (in terms of citizenship) as well (at this time period there was no legitimate state of Israel yet) but also millions ethnic Poles were killed on a mass scale.

I am not saying that in those difficult and bloody times everybody was a good guy and behaving correctly. In extreme times unfortunately often extraordinary and ugly things happen. Thus – as always – there were many Polish people who betrayed themselves, their own country or Je ws for the only sake to save themselves or their families. This is just human nature. Whether you like it or not. Not everybody is psychologically strong or honorable. But Poles never collaborated with the Germans en masse as some like to portray and prove.

And while we are talking of the difficult matter of responsibilities. The problem is that Je ws in general for centuries always like to see themselves as “victims” and see everybody else as enemies and offenders, even in the case of Poland which gave the Je ws a new home and refuge from all the persecution and injustice which happened all over Europe against them. They somehow never like to admit that to a large extent they were also responsible for the fate of their own kind and race.

Unfortunately, there is sufficient proof available which very clearly shows that the West (Allies) and the Je wish communities in the US, Britain etc knew very well what was happening and even there is some evidence that many knew what Mr. H planned to do with the Je ws in Germany. This can be evidenced by the fact that many of the more elite Je ws were given enough time to emigrate to other Western countries before the sh*t hit the fan.

But what is more disturbing is the fact that thousands of Je ws were actually also in the German Wehrmacht, and various units of the S-S, as well as collaborated with Germans in the concentration camps. Have a look at the book by British-Je wish researcher and book author Bryan Mark Rigg who discovered that thousands of men of Je wish descent and hundreds of what the N@zis called ‘full Je ws’ served in the German military with A. H!tler’s knowledge and approval. Cambridge University researcher Bryan Rigg has traced the Je wish ancestry of more than 1,200 of H!tler’s soldiers, including 2 field marshals, fifteen generals, two full generals, eight lieutenant generals, five major generals, “commanding up to 100,000 troops. You can find his books on Amazon if you like.

So, having said that, certain groups should stop pointing at the shard in someone’s eye, while at the same time not seeing the wooden log before one’s own head. The West and the Je ws themselves had a much bigger role to play and a much higher responsibility for the extermination of their own kind than Poles ever did.

I also highly recommend to read the famous and controversial books by Je wish-American historian (his parents survived the HC) Norman Finkelstein by the title “The Holcaust Industry” as well as his other famous book “Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-$emit!sm and the Abuse of History”

In those books he clearly points out how the suffering of the Je ws for decades has been exploited for various financial and political reasons while at the same time the impacted families hardly ever received any compensations.

Posted on 2/2/18 | 6:57 PM CET

jack

Jewish hatred of Poland is shocking, considering the history of the Jews in Poland dates back over 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was the centre of Jewish culture, thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy.
From the founding of the Kingdom of Poland 966 through to the early years of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth created in 1569, Poland was the most tolerant country in Europe. Known as paradisus judaeorum (Latin for “Paradise of the Jews”), it became a shelter for persecuted and expelled European Jewish communities and the home to the world’s largest Jewish community of the time. According to some sources, about three-quarters of the world’s Jews lived in Poland by the middle of the 16th century.
This ended with the Partitions of Poland which began in 1772, in particular, with the discrimination and persecution of Jews in the Russian Empire. During World War II there was a nearly complete genocidal destruction of the Polish Jewish community by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, during the 1939–1945 German occupation of Poland and the ensuing Holocaust.
If Polish people were and are so “anti-semitic”, how come two-thirds world’s Jewish population lived and prospered in Kingdom of Poland for over 1,000 years?

Posted on 2/2/18 | 7:06 PM CET

Veritas-Semper

OK, so the German Foreign Minister – Sigmar Gabriel – weighed in on the Poland-Israel “spat” and left no doubt that Germany accepts total responsibility for the Holocaust. Which, in his statement includes both Je ws and Poles as Germany’s goal – aside form exterminating the Je ews – was to exterminate Poles and Polish culture.

Aus*witz and most other German D*ath camps were on territory annexed by the Third Rei*h – the so-called General Government territories. There was no Poland as a state during that time. The Polish government was in exile and was sending emissaries (Karski) to Washington explicitly telling the US Government as to the plight of the Je ws under the German rule. The US and Britain chose not to respond. So, are both Britain and the US complicit in the Holocaust according to Israel?

Now, it’s time for the Bundestag to weigh in and re-affirm the statement of its Foreign Minister.

Posted on 2/4/18 | 6:17 PM CET

Veritas-Semper

And, now Moshe Arens – the former Foreign Mininster of Israel – adds his voice in defense of Poland.

So, what is going on with the official government of Israel attack on Poland?

Could it be simple internal re-election politics, or has the proposed Polish law exposed the deep seated sense in Israel that their own elites were complicit in the Hol*caust by turning on their own?